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Marine Turtle Newsletter 49:3-4, © 1990
Charles W. Caillouet, Jr.
Chief, Life Studies Division, National Marine Fisheries Service, Southeast Fisheries Center, Galveston Lab, 4700 Avenue U, Galveston, Texas 77551-5997 USA
Two major problems in sea turtle conservation and management need attention. The first stems from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species' (CITES) definition of a "population" of Appendix I species (New Delhi, India, 1981, Conf. 3.15) as that which occurs within the jurisdiction of [CITES] parties. Rather than using this definition for populations of wide-ranging, migratory species such as sea turtles, the concept of unit stock or management unit should be applied. Well established definitions of unit stock or management unit have been used in the management of many migratory marine resources (e.g., tuna, salmon, whales). Whether one uses ideal or working definitions of unit stock, it is fundamental that unit stock be defined, and this is no less true for sea turtles than for other living marine resources. If the best available data are inadequate to characterize unit stocks of marine turtles, geographic regions (e.g., northern half of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico for Kemp's ridley, Lepidochelys kempi) could be used instead as starting points for international conservation and management until more data were collected by the usual techniques (tagging, morphometric-meristic, physiological, biochemical, etc.) to delineate the stocks. Certainly, most marine turtle biologists would agree that coastal States' jurisdictions represent only small portions of any sea turtle species' unit stock. Such a definition of "population" may encourage a coastal nation to carry out activities which may not benefit the unit stock of a sea turtle species as a whole.
Second, CITES is an international, trade-regulating treaty and not a sea turtle conservation and management treaty (Navid, 1982), yet sea turtle ranching (a kind of management) is being considered by CITES. International conservation and management of sea turtles are needed via international commissions or treaties, whether regional or worldwide. These could provide for co-lateral sea turtle conservation and management plans and actions by member nations. An example of the beginnings of such as approach may be the International Accords for the Management of Sea Turtle Resources of the East Pacific (Jack Woody, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, personal communication). As in salmon stocks, reproduction in sea turtles is confined to sites within a coastal State's (Nation's) jurisdiction, yet sea turtles roam the high seas and traverse the jurisdictional boundaries of many nations. Therefore, some parallels applicable to sea turtle conservation and management might be found in the management of Pacific salmon stocks through international treaty. In any case, conservation and management of sea turtles based on the concept of unit stock should be a focus of attention worldwide.
Navid, D. 1982. Conservation and management of sea turtles: a legal overview, p.523-535. In: K. Bjorndal (ed.), Biology and Conservation of Sea Turtles. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C.